Conservationists delight as endangered butterfly makes early appearance The UK’s most endangered butterfly is making a bumper early appearance at a remote British habitat – confounding recent grim figures about its population. The High Brown Fritillary has been recorded as being ‘out’ slightly earlier than usual and early counts reveal excellent numbers of butterflies present,…
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Guy Shorrock – Eleonora’s Falcon
Eleonora’s falcon and a lady ahead of her time In the last couple of years I have been working for the RSPB on Cyprus during the autumn to help the authorities deal with the large scale of trapping of migrant birds on one of the British military bases. Encouragingly the annual monitoring report produced…
Red Kites in June, and a return to the UK
I’m keeping a note of whether I see Red Kites on each day through the year – since I spent less than 24 hours in the UK in June the tally was a feeble 0 days out of 30. January: 22 days out of 31. February: 24 days out of 28. March: 26 days…
Guest blog – My e-petition for licensing grouse shooting by Ed Hutchings
Ed writes about his e-petition to license driven grouse shooting. Twitter: @EdHutchings It was in India that I learnt the news that the Government had responded to my petition to license driven grouse shooting. The grouse moors of Britain felt a million miles away from the dusty śāl forests of central India immortalised by Kipling….
Tim Melling – Yellow-browed Warbler
Tim writes: The Yellow-browed Warbler is an enigma. It breeds in Siberia east of the Urals and winters in Malaysia and Thailand. Yet it occurs with great regularity in Britain, usually in autumn. To arrive in Britain would involve a journey of at least 4000 km, but flying in totally the wrong direction to…